The coffee kept me up a little while, but the rain came back that night, slapping against my office windows as I lay on my sofa bed. Why was I lying there? Why wasn’t I out on the town, dancing with a long tall blonde in a slinky dress? Maybe bringing her here or going to her place and helping her slip into something more comfortable, like my arms.
I knew the answer; it was upstairs with those kids. So I lay waiting for trouble to return, knowing it would.
Arriving at the Criminal Courts Building early, I searched the docket for Haney’s name, wanting to get a word in with the judge before his arraignment. When I couldn’t find his name, the acid in my stomach churned. I snatched up a pay phone in the lobby and called Parish Prison, speaking to the shift lieutenant who took his time but looked up the name for me.
“Haney. Yeah. Bonded out four thirty A.M.”
I asked more questions and got the obvious answers — a friendly judge and an even friendlier bail bondsman had Haney out before sunrise. The only surprise was that Haney had only two previous arrests, both misdemeanors, no convictions.
I should have gotten a speeding ticket on the way home, but no one was paying attention. Catching my breath when I reached the top of the stairs, I tapped lightly on the door. Even a bachelor knows better than to ring a doorbell with a baby inside. Kaye answered and I let out a relieved sigh, which disappeared immediately when she told me Charley wasn’t there.
“Where’d he go?”
“To work. Malone picked him up.” Her eyebrows furrowed when she saw the worried look in my eyes. I pointed to the phone, and she opened the door wider, telling me, “Malone said a one-armed Charley was better than any of his other mechanics.”
She knew the number by heart and I dialed. Malone answered after the fifth ring, and I warned him about Haney being out of jail.
“Didn’t know he was in jail.”
“Well, he had a gun last night, so be on the lookout.”
Then I called Sullivan to make sure the patrol boys did a drive-by at the Gulf Station before I went to see Grosetto.
He was behind the desk wearing the same lime green suit, sporting that same crooked, slimy grin when I walked in on him. The place still reeked of fish.
“Where’s Haney?”
Grosetto tried growling, which only made him look like a randy terrier instead of a gangster. His hands dropped below the desktop, and I turned my left shoulder to him, pulling out my .45, letting him get a look at it.
“Put your hands back on your desk, and they better be empty.”
“Who da’ heller you comin’ in here, tellin’ me what to do?”
“Where’s Haney?”
He tried smiling, but it looked more like a grimace. “I’m glad you come by. You needa tell Charley he owes another fifty. I, how you put it, miscalculated the amount.” This time it was a sickly smile, showing off yellowed teeth.
I shot his telephone, watched it bounce high, slam against the back wall, the loud report of my .45 echoing in my ears. Pointing it at his face now, I said. “Put your hands back on your desk.”
He did, his eyes bulging now. I backed up and locked the door behind me and came back to the desk as I holstered my weapon, slammed both hands against the desk, shoving it across the linoleum floor with him and his chair behind, pinning him against the wall.
“Tell Haney I’m looking for him.”
Three boxers and two trainers were in the narrow hall. They backed away cautiously when I opened my coat and showed them the .45, none of them saying anything until I started through the gym. A couple of brave ones cursed me behind my back but kept their distance.
I figured Haney was loony enough to come by, but it was Grosetto, just before midnight. He wore a gray dress shirt and black pants, and held his hands high as he stepped into the foyer. I was sitting in darkness, halfway up the stairs, in my shirt and pants, with my .45 in my right hand.
“That you?” he called out when I told him to freeze. I’d unscrewed the hall light.
“What do you want?”
“I come to tell you somethin’.”
I went and patted him down, closed and locked the building door, then shoved him into my office, leaving the door open. He smelled like cigarette smoke and stale beer. I made him stand still as I moved to my desk and leaned against it.
“All right, what is it?”
“I made a mistake. Charley don’t owe me nothin’.”
“Good.”
He tried smiling again, but it still didn’t work. “I checked on you. You got some rep. You know. War hero. Ex-cop. Bad when you gotta be bad.” He looked around my office for a second. “You check up on me?”
“In the dictionary. Under scumbag.”
“You funny. You owe me a phone, you know.”
Maybe it was the twitch in his eye or the way he sucked in a breath when I heard it, a thump upstairs. Grosetto should never play poker. It was in his eyes, and I was on him in three long strides, slamming the .45 against his pointed head, tumbling him out of my way.
I took the stairs three at a time, reaching the top as a gunshot rang out. My apartment door was open and a woman’s screaming voice echoed as I ran in, scene registering as I swung my .45 to the right toward the figure standing with a gun in hand. The gun turned toward me, and I fired twice. Haney bounced on his toes as the rounds punched his chest. The gun dropped, and he fell straight back, head ricocheting off an end table.
Kaye, with Donna in her arms, moved for Charley as he lay on the kitchen floor, a circle of bright red blood under him. Holstering my weapon, I leaped toward them as Kaye cradled his head in her lap.
He was conscious, a neat hole in his lower abdomen, blood oozing through his white undershirt. I jumped back to the phone and called for an ambulance. When I turned back, Charley was trying to sit up.
“Don’t!” I jumped into the kitchen, snatched an ice tray from the freezer, broke up the ice, wrapped it in a dishcloth, and got Kaye out of the way. Donna was screeching now. I pressed the ice against the wound and told Charley to keep calm, the ambulance would be right there. Then I remembered I’d locked the foyer door and had to go down for it.
Williams and Jeanfreau accompanied the ambulance, and they used my phone to call the detectives, while Charley was rolled out with Kaye and Donna in tow. He was still conscious.
“What’d you shoot him with?” Williams asked, pointing to the two large holes around Haney’s heart. I pointed to my .45, which I’d put on the kitchen counter before they came in.
It was then I remembered Grosetto and took Williams down to my office. The little man was just coming around. Williams slapped his cuffs on him and brought him up to have a look at Haney. He looked even younger in death. He was wearing a yellow shirt and dungarees, his eyes duller now, his face flaccid. His shoes were tied in double knots as if his mom had made sure they wouldn’t come undone.
It took the detectives forty minutes to arrive. I made coffee for all and was on my second cup when Lieutenant Frenchy Capdeville strolled in, trailing cigarette smoke, with a rookie dick at his heels. Frenchy needed a haircut badly, his black hair hung in loose curls over the collar of his brown suit.
His rookie partner had tried a pencil-thin mustache like Frenchy’s, but his was lopsided. “Joe Sparks,” Frenchy introduced him to me. Sparks, also in a brown suit, was sharp enough to keep quiet and let Frenchy run the show, which he did, quickly and efficiently.
After the coroner’s men took Haney away, they took me and Grosetto to the Detective Bureau, Frenchy calling in Eddie Sullivan. While they booked Grosetto, I gave a formal statement about the first man I’d shot since the war. Self-defense, defined in Louisiana’s Napoleonic Code Law, was justifiable homicide.